What is the spiritual significance of the Gopinath Patnaik story?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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let’s do this question from the program what is the significance of the story of brahmana’s brother bhoopnath patnaika being imprisoned by pratapudra and then being rescued by lord chaitanya answer krishnaswami at one level literally linearly describes lord chaitanya’s past times and all the chapters in antalila when lord chaitanya is in is in jagannath puri at that time this past time is described of his coming to of kubinath patnaika being punished and then being rescued so there are multiple messages through this past time first level lord chaitanya the main lesson there is that lord chaitanya cares for his devotees even materially not just spiritually but materially also but it is also that that is the lord arranges but at the same time the mood over there is that the devotees should also be responsible in their material affairs and gopinath patnaika basically turns out to be careless so he’s he’s a little careless and he wastes his money on various things so not just his money he wastes the king’s money now taxes come from various things and the king is upset with him the administration is upset with him so chaitanya mahaprabhu doesn’t just because you’re a devotee you can do anything and everything no chaitanya mahaprabhu makes the point that you have to be responsible you have to be careful yeah if you are the king’s money should go to the king you cannot misappropriate that money so that is the lesson of the ordinary morality and that it also has to be followed and that’s is important but this also talks about this the devotees have to be moral in their conduct with others in the normal affair they should be attentive in their dealing ordinary dealings with others and another point there is that when repeatedly devotees come and different devotees come and ask lord chaitanya he is being now he’s out being illiterate basically so at that time chaitanya mahaprabhu says that what is this you know i am getting a headache why are they coming and troubling me like this i if there are more people troubling me how many people troubling me like this i will leave and i will go to alal nath so here normally but then all the devotees normally will not no one will trouble you afterwards but then although the lord says like this the lord also arranges through circumstances which is not circumstantial alone just ultimately the lords arrangement to have him rescued in time so the point there is that the lord helps but the devotees should not demand from the lord and normally the the level of bhakti which we should practice and believe that when we have any headaches when we have heartbreaks when we have some trouble burdens when we go and share them with the lord and pray for his help and that is good at the same time an advanced level of devotion is not just that we share our trouble with the lord but that we want to remove the lord’s trouble just like the devotees apply chandan on the lord during the hot season that is why he said that chandan the lord’s body will become hot so we need to mitigate the heat similarly the devotees mood is that i should not create anxiety for the lord i should remove anxiety for the lord and removing anxiety means that i should work for i should work for doing what the lord what the lord wishes so that mood of transcendental love where the devotees not only trouble the lord and but the lord helps the devotees that mood is also overall that past time is it’s quite as you rightly said it’s it’s a deep past time where at first level not much seems to be seen happening over there from a spiritual point of view what exactly is happening so the point is that it’s not that everyone in every way in the lord’s past is entirely transcendent sometimes they act then some characters may act in non-transcendental ways also so when they act in that way how the lord accommodates them and how the lord enables them restores their devotion that is also demonstrated and the whole idea is that also that past time demonstrates how pratapudra has become utterly completely devoted to the lord because he doesn’t requested that he should do something and he just gets the news that lord chaitanya may leave and when he gets the news he not only cancels the stops the belittling that i never wanted this but then he actually increases increases use further rewards and compensates and then he takes care of everything so in that way that is also a past time through which pratapudra’s devotion is demonstrated so this way we can infer different lessons from all that particular master